Israeli protestors waving Palestinian flags faced assault and police arrest after police minister, Itamar Ben Gvir demanded their detention (image: Hadas Porush)
What is a protest movement worth which uses the same repressive tactics as the government against which it’s protesting? What use is a movement that demands democracy, while behaving like thugs to those who would be allies? What good is a movement that betrays the values it claims to uphold?
While Israel’s new fascist government came to power two weeks ago, it took that long for a new mass movement to arise that opposed it and everything it stands for. Well, almost everything. More on that later.
The protesters demand a restoration of democracy. They demand the new government maintain the rule of law and not dismantle the Supreme Court. They demand that Israel remain a state both for secular and religious Jews. They denounce the most radical, extreme government in the nation’s history. They understand that institutions and values they hold dear are in danger. They are desperately trying to extinguish the Reichstag Fire before it consumes the nation.
The message is resonating. On Saturday night, anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000 turned out in Tel Aviv’s HaBimah Square, the largest crowd ever gathered there. For a Twitter thread roll of Tal Schneider’s photos.
In addition some 3000 people gathered in Jerusalem around President Herzog residence protesting his relatively moderate reactions to the proposed changes. pic.twitter.com/PoJ3b8XpMV
— Tal Schneider טל שניידר تال شنايدر (@talschneider) January 14, 2023
Police now says that 80k showed up in Tel Aviv. There is additional demonstration in Haifa. (Much smaller)
Credit: @MovGov pic.twitter.com/O41yF6TQ0w— Tal Schneider טל שניידר تال شنايدر (@talschneider) January 14, 2023
Yisrael Frei, a dissident ultra-Orthodox journalist, recently arrested by the Shin Bet for praising a Palestinian who planned a terror attack, but never carried it out because he would not attack Israeli civilians, tweeted:
In their face: horns and [political] power, Israeli flags, Palestinian flags waving. Against the fascist camp, the camp of equality rises. Together, Without fear. To victory!
בפרצוף שלכם, שלטון ושופרות. דגלי ישראל, דגלי פלסטין, תקפצו. מול מחנה הפאשיזם – מחנה השוויון מרים ראש. יחד. בלי פחד. עד לניצחון. pic.twitter.com/ZAzwisIzxD
— ישראל פריי (@freyisrael1) January 14, 2023
The following tweet celebrates the arrival of Mansour Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Raam Party which was the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition (the center-right government which preceded the current one). Abbas is considered by Israelis to be the Good Arab. He won’t rock the boat. He won’t be a firebrand like the Palestinian nationalist political party, Balad. Like the Haredi political parties, he wants a piece of the pie for his constituents. Yes, he wants to provide electricity for Bedouin villages who’ve never been connected to the power grid. But he is an old-fashioned patronage politician. “Give me mine,” should be his slogan. Note, Abbas is not carrying a Palestinian flag. Possibly because it would get him arrested.
מנסור עבאס יא תותח על
הגיע להפגין נגד ההפיכה המשטרית@mnsorabbas pic.twitter.com/mBNtn9NevT— Ossi Goodbeer דמוקרטית 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@GoodbeerOssi) January 14, 2023
Here a thug protester assaults a group raising a Palestinian flag and rips it out of the man’s hands. Barak Mayer’s tweet says: Wow, what a impressive demonstration of democracy today was.”
וואו איזה מפגן מרגש של דמוקרטיה היה היום: https://t.co/UhCmaC9AaJ
— Barak Mayer (@ireallyhateyou) January 14, 2023
More protestors held a Palestinian flag aloft. Mayer’s tweet reads: “We’ve begun. Democracy for all, from the Jordan to the [Mediterranean] sea.”
Muhammad Shehadeh reports on physical assaults and arrests of protestors for flying the Palestinian flag:
2\ Here, a pro-democracy protester blocks the Channel 14 cameraman from filming the Palestinian flag in #TelAviv. The protester then accused the cameraman of assault.pic.twitter.com/VMfzd3nQWW
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) January 14, 2023
Above, you see one of the main problems with any Israeli Opposition movement whether it be the J13 social equality movement of the Crime Minister protests. They all feel they must outdo the fascist right in terms of displaying their patriotism. This is a dead-end. You can never be a better patriot than the Likud. They have that market cornered. When you try to satisfy everyone by showing your patriotism, you satisfy no one. You stand for nothing despite whatever slogans you may shout. Apparently, they haven’t heard the saying: “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” Likud are the scoundrels. Why seek to emulate or outdo them?
By the way, the slogan of today’s protest was “Freedom, Equality, Good Government.” Freedom for whom? Israeli Jews, yes. But Palestinians? Forget about it. Equality? For whom? Perhaps for Israeli Jewish LGBTQ community, perhaps for women facing the misogyny of the new government. But for Palestinians? No. Not even for Israeli Palestinians.
While many demonstrators held aloft signs warning the new government was destroying Israeli democracy, that is a misnomer. They are protesting to protect Israeli ethnocracy: a system that offers democracy to a single ethnic group and denies it to another. The current Israel system offers such rights to Israeli Jews and offerrs a far more limited set of rights to Israeli Palestinians. While offering no rights to West Bank Palestinians.
A Haaretz journalist highlighted the taboo among protestors and the Israeli public at large against the P-word. Here he quotes an anymous demonstrator when faced with a Palestinian flag: “This isn’t the time for that,” another protester said. “The demonstration has a focused message, and you’re diverting attention from the issue.”
When will there be time for that? They don’t need to answer. There will never be time for that. A “focused message” is not an excuse for discarding the issue of Palestine. It is, if not the most important issue, it is one of the critical issues facing Israel. But given this refusal, there can ultimately be no justice, equality or freedom there. Occupation will continue. War will continue. Death will continue. On both sides.
How does one get Israelis to recognize this? You can’t. As Upton Sinclair once said: ““It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In the Israeli context I would say: It is impossible to get a nation to understand something when it believes that its existence depends on it not understanding it. Israelis are correct about one aspect of this conundrum. Recognizing Palestine and the necessity of resolving its claims would end the existence of Israel as a Judeo-supremacist state. It would require an entirely different political conception of the state. This is what Israelis do not want to understand. Perhaps they will never understand. If they don’t, war and death will continue endlessly: the greatest tragedy at all possible.
However laudable it may be to oppose this disastrous government, this movement will not last. It will peter out as so many have before this one. Bibi will buy it off. He’ll announce with a flourish that some of the most noxious legislative proposals are off the table (for now). The uproar will die down. And the government will go back to tearing down Israeli institutions and rights piece by piece. They’ll do it more slowly. They’ll do it piece by piece, rather than all at once. They’ll learn their lesson from this. Don’t tell the frog to jump in a pot of boiling water. Instead, tell him how nice and warm the water is. Then turn up the heat.
Silverstein has published Tikun Olam since 2003, It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He lives in Seattle, but his heart is in the east. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye, the New Arab, and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.
I think it was Upton Sinclair.
@Jan Willem: Absolutely right. My bad.
I saw in the videos more than a dozen Palestinian flags being waved and none of the 80,000 other demonstrators got upset. However, after a fruitless dialogue, one demonstrator ripped away another demonstrator’s Palestinian flag, which minor incident you’ve turned into front page news.
To me, a Palestinian flag symbolizes the end of the Jewish State, and that’s not what these demonstrators want, nor is it what they want to be associated with.
Richard, you said to me:
“Don’t offer quotations. You want to sound smart and offer profound lessons. You aren’t. And you don’t. And they serve no useful purpose.”
Yet Richard can quote Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, but won’t allow me to quote.
‘All animals are equal, but some animal are more equal than others’ -George Orwell
@ Top Cat:
What you saw in one video wasn’t all that happened. I didn’t use every video I watched related to waving Palestinian flags. THere were many of them. In some, flag wavers said they were threatened. Some by protestors and some by police. One thing you must understand about me, which you don’t seem to: if I post one video illustrating a point, there are many more I’ve watched pointing to the same phenomenon. I pick one to illustrate the point. Not to mention the woman who was ready to attend the protest and wave her Palestinian flag when she received personal threats via text msg. Not to mention the Haaretz article to which I linked which gave further examples of violence against protestors and interviews with those who opposed the flags.
What you “think” and what is true are 2 entirely different things. A Palestinian flag is the flag of Palestine. It is a place. It is a country. It has a flag. THe flag of Israel is the flag of a country. Not Palestine. So believing one flag means the destruction of another country is not just ludicrous, it is a lie. You believe a lie.
The anti-Palestine protestors hate the flag not because they believe it will replace Israel. But because they don’t want a Palestinian state. While some Israelis still believe in 2 states, the majority probably no longer does. So of course they hate seeing the Palestinian flag. It reminds them of something invonenient they’d rather ignore and pretend doesn’t, or shouldn’t exist.
As for quotations, I only use them when it’s relevant, which is sparingly. I don’t add silly quotations in every comment like Hallmark greeting cards. Remember, comments must be substantive and deal directly with the topic of the post. Vacuous use of quotations violate that. You did it here deliberately to provoke me. I don’t permit commenters to do that. So try that or anything similar again and you’ll be on a one-way ticket to Ben Gurion (unless you’re already there). I do have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to that.
BTW, it’s my blog. So if you don’t like my telling you not to spout quotations, you know where you can go and what you can do.
Wonder how authorities in USA would react to protest in favour of Iran with Iranian flags on display….Australian authorities banned display of Russian flag at Australian open tennis tournanament
Anyone may wave a flag of any country in any place in this country. In fact, American citizens have the right to desecrate our own flag if they choose. Don’t assume other democratic countries are as intolerant, violent, or abusive as Israel is.
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